Genetic modification technology has been practically applied as a breed improvement method of plants, and genetically-modified farm crops such as soybeans, maize, rapeseeds, cottons and potatoes to which functions such as herbicide resistance and harmful insect resistance had been added were developed and have been already in practical use. Further in recent years, research and development in which a useful foreign gene is introduced into a chromosome of a plant to produce a genetically-modified plant have been carried forward as a procedure to produce a functional protein or peptide for pharmaceuticals or test agents. Functional components produced by using the genetically-modified plant include not only a protein and a peptide that are a product of the introduced gene but also a product by a reaction of an introduced enzyme protein. There are many advantages in production of the functional components in a plant. The advantages include reduction of cost compared with an animal transgenic system, easy adjustment of the production scale depending on a market scale, and no possibility of contamination with a pathogen derived from an animal such as virus and prion.
As for a technology of producing efficiently functional components in a plant, for example, a method of utilizing a promoter specific for tissue in which a functional component is accumulated for genetic modification in order to control a stage, a site, and an amount of expression of a functional component has been disclosed (e.g., see Patent Document 1).
Patent Document 1: JP 2007-306941 A